On June 25, 1897 the steamer the Alice carried a first load of gold through St. Michael's Trading post in Yupik territory on the western coast of the Alaska. Originally the Russian American company founded St. Michael Redoubt in 1833 and by 1897 the town of St. Michael became a major hub in the burgeoning Yukon-Alaska Gold Rush. The map below illustrates the Yukon trade routes the mineral would travel with St. Michael there on the shores of western Alaska Territory.
Klondike travel routes
Between 1886 and 1899 approximately 100,000 people entered (invaded?) the Alaska-Yukon area with aspirations of securing hefty tins of gold. This urgent haste started after, in August 1896, a group of Tagist family members, Shaaw Tláa, K̲áa Goox̱, and Keish, and Shaaw Tláa's non-Native husband George Carmack located gold in Rabbit Creek (afterwords known as Banaza Creek), around the relatively new (and contested) border between Alaska and Canada. The family decided to allow Carmack to announce the discovery to the trading post because the authorities would most likely have denied such claims made by Native people, leaving the claim open to others.
When near-do-wells flooded the north armed with pick axes and gold pans they transformed the shape and governance structures of Natives villages and towns. For example within a year from three prospectors finding gold in the village of Siqnazuaq in 1897, which previously held less than a 1,000 residents, the population swelled to 10,000. Upon the coming of this immense amount of people, Siqnazuaq's name was changed to Nome, Alaska. It's estimated that by the early twentieth century the town's population reached 28, 000. Currently, the population sits under 4,000.
The Alaska Territory's boom economy reopened an American frontier once proclaimed closed by historian Fredrick Jackson Turner in 1893 with his work The Frontier in American History. In the nineteenth century there was an idea that the continent was an empty space allowing non-Natives to travel westward, securing land and sequestering and killing Native people, until the movement ended on the Pacific side of the contiguous part of the nation, what would be known as the "Lower-48." As the United States pushed westward that shifting border allowed those, within the context of U.S. sponsorship, to reinvent themselves. For Turner, the end of the frontier meant the foreclosure to a distinct way of life, an end for the ability of the nation's population to reinvent and adapt themselves to a new land. Fortunately for the nation, the gold rush in the Alaska Territory created a "Last Frontier" bringing with it a sense of renewal to the nation's imagination. Factory workers in the industrial economy could rest assured that there were rugged independent people at the edge of the nation living lives that their own social and financial situations disallowed them (this is of course the time when Inuit art came to serve a similar purpose).
Felice Pedroni aka Felix Pedro
One such story of reinvention in the Last Frontier was that of prospector Felice Pedroni who uncovered gold amidst the shallows of Cleary Creek, now Pedro Creek, in the Fairbanks region of central Alaska allegedly on July 22, 1902. Born in Trignano di Fanano, Pedroni sailed to New York in 1881 at 23 years of age when he reinvented himself as Felix Pedro, donning a Hispanic name change. Working his way through the country he moved to the Yukon in 1895, with dreams of gold. His search went on for years as he worked claims on either side of the border. Upon a discovery near the Tanana Hills, he famously exclaimed, "There's gold in them there hills!"
Journalist and historian Dermot Cole discusses the shadow of scandal and drama that surrounded Pedroni's life in this exciting article published through the Alaskan Newsminer.com. Pedroni's claim to the mining site proves complicated by a partner Alexander L. Hanot, whom Pedroni knew from his days working in Washington state. Pedro claimed that the only reason Hanot became a split partner with him was that latter owed him 75,000 dollars and that signing him into the claim protected Pedroni's assets due to an alleged maternity case. Hanot denied such allegations that he owed money or that even his share of the claim was fake in any sense. Pedro asserted that when he made the deal with Hanot he was not of a healthy mind. From 1903 to 1909 various people testified to Pedro's deteriorating mental health, notes Cole. Yet, other's testified to the contrary! In divorce papers, Cole writes, Pedro's wife accused her husband of fraud in the Hanot situation.
View of a stone monument with brass plaque dedicated to Felix Pedro located at mile 16.5 of the Steese Highway at the location where Felix Pedro is believed to have discovered gold in 1902. UAA-hmc-0620-series1-f5-16
8 years after his claim, Pedro passed away at the age of 52. Reportedly losing his life to a heart attack, many thought he was a victim of murder. He body was buried in California and laid there until exhumed in 1972 to ship to his hometown in Italy. Upon the transfer, his body was examined and authorities determined his death was the result of ingesting poison. Many suspect his wife Mary Doran took his life. The notion of the frontier in the national imagery served for countless people such as Felice Pedroni shed their old lives as they domesticated an imagined frontier, refusing to acknowledge Indigenous lands, culture, and authority. One need not be Edward Said to see that the imaginative geography of imperial frontiers, which allow people to put forth, new names, or invented personas, are always home to other communities these actors help dispossess.
On May 17, 1906 the Secretary of the Interior gave the opportunity for Alaska Natives to acquire parcels of land in sizes not to exceed 160 acres in size. This acreage was to be vacant of inhabitants,"unappropriated" to others, as well as being "unreserved non mineral land," and then could go to any "Indian, Aleut or Eskimo of full or mixed blood" male in Alaska who was 21 years old or older. (34 Stat. 197) These tracks of land were inalienable and non-taxable. Administrative interpretations of the law, however, would limit the number of Natives (adult head of family) qualifying for the land for nearly three-quarters of a century.
Unlike the recognition of Native title to lands, the Allotment Act created parcels of land to individual Native (male adult) applicants. Scholars David Case and David Voluck argue that the Act created significant legal burdens to land "distribution" for statehood and for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971. They write
Many Allotment application were originally denied without hearings and removed from federal land records, which permitted others to select and even receive title to to the same lands originally applied for as allotments. (113)
From these flagrant injustices, they note, came many lawsuits that established a legal due process for Alaska Natives in US courts, concerning land rights.
Allotment map of Pine Ridge
Unlike the General Allotment Act of 1887, the Alaska Native Allotment Act didn't break up reservational land holdings as it did for American Indians in the contiguous part of the nation. They both did however seek to individualize landownership. Whereby the division of American Indian reserved lands for individual Indian and non-Indian ownership in part sought to unravel indigenous national (tribal) sovereignty, but without the history of clarifying such indigenous possession of land allotment in Alaska seemed to be asserted as a way develop Alaska without confronting the issue of collective Native land rights.
The act was amended in 1956 with many statutes, one important one being that Natives could acquire lands in national forests. Legal actions concerning Tlingit and Haida individual ownership of land in the Tongass National Forest do remain in process today. I recently read that there were approximately 900 individual applications for parcels in the Forest.
Congress repealed the Alaska Native Allotment Act with Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. Sec. 1617,) with a savings clause for applications that were pending on the date of the law's passage on in 1971 in 43 U.S.C. Sec. 1617(a).
From "Project Chariot Marine Mammal Study, Cape Thompson, 1960-61." ASL-PCA-561
"If your mountain is not in the right place, just drop us a card."
Edward Teller, University of Alaska Commencement Address, 1959
In 1958 The United States Atomic Energy Commission proposed "Project Plowshare" to detonate a 2.4 megaton series of nuclear explosions in the building of a harbor off Alaska's northwestern coast. George Washington University Professor Al Teich describes the project as part of a larger trend among scientists called "nuclear landscaping." For after the advent of nuclear weaponry, scientists grew interested in the possible ways these devices could reshape expanses of land and alter seascapes. The Alaska mission was planned to take place at Cape Thompson, about 32 miles from Tikigaq, or The Village of Point Hope. A 1961 editorial in the Anchorage Times entitled "Alaska Test Needed For Progress of Man," argued for the venture on the grounds that building the harbor in that region would create viable economic opportunities for the new state, in the way of a large port. "Such development would," the op-ed by owner Robert Atwood asserted, "stimulate opportunities for employment and better living conditions in the area now on the fringe of civilization." The Inupiat communities living in the area of the area of the Project Chariot however felt it would hold terrible impacts on their life ways and the animals of their homeland.
Original scheme for Project Chariot.
In the 1989 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article, "Project Chariot: How Alaska Escaped Nuclear Excavation," writer Dan O'Neill documented how the Chariot proposal was to be the first in a set of works in the Plowshares program that would rebuild the world through nuclear destruction. Brainchild of Edward Teller, lead Scientist at the Livermore Labs, the plowshares program would, under his guidance, (quoted through O'Neill) "engage in the great art of geographic engineering, to reshape the earth at your pleasure." Plowshares was part of a even more nationwide postwar movement to re-engineer landforms through massive endeavors, such as was the Glen Canyon Dam in southern Utah.
A 1958 picture of Edward Teller as Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
With great concern, the region's people, along with a concert of citizens outside the area, questioned how the explosions and the following radiation would harm the environment and their communities. Looking at how such devices brought terrible conditions to Nagasaki and the Bikini Islanders, the Inupiat didn't believe the promises of safely the government gave them. According to O'Neill, village representative David Frankson argued strongly against the idea, as did all regional Inupiat and Athabaskan communities.
David Frankson, in glasses, pictured with a group of Native representatives meeting with Gov. Egan.
The threats of Plowshare program, along with burgeoning governmental policies set to restrict Native subsistence life ways, made the Association of American Indian Affairs host the Point Barrow Conference on Native Rights in November, 1961. The conference resulted in the formation of the regional Inupiat Paitot organization, which included Frankson and artist Howard Rock. "Our Inupiat Paitot," they wrote in a statement, "is our land around the whole arctic world where Inupiat live, our right to be great hunters and brave independent people...our right to the minerals that belong to us in the land we claim." For the first time Inupiat people across Alaska formed an alliance as to express specific concerns for their rights as indigenous people. In their statement they wrote of Project Chariot, demanding a halt to the program, saying "The result of this explosion will be very dangerous to native health because of the effect of radiation on animals the people have depended on for food." The Paitot articulated the larger cycle of life at stake in Project Chariot, by connecting their health to the health of the environment. "We deny the right of the Bureau of Land Management," their statement read, "to dispose of land claimed by a native village, and urge the Interior Department to revoke the permit before the experiment goes any further." The Inupiat Paitot also expressed that such nuclear tests held transnational consequences when communicating, "We, the Inupiat, strongly protest," any such activity on their lands, "and request the President of the United States that the experiments of the Russians on their nuclear explosions be discontinued," as well.
In the summer of 1962, The government sidelined Project Chariot due to unforeseen "flaws" in its design. Yet the threat levied against the Inupiat by the proposal led to a political organization, which in a year and a half, began working with the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the Dena Nena Henash forming a large scale movement to secure Native rights to land and heritage in Alaska. These three political groups stood as foundational to the Native rights movement of the 1960s that would work toward the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
Inupiat filmmaker Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson made the incredible 2012 documentary Project Chariot, where she examines the history of the project and the fight against it in much detail. The trailer below on Edwardson's Vimeo site.
Works Consulted/Cited
Al Teich's Tibits http://www.alteich.com/tidbits/t050602.htm
In graduate school I was fortunate to study under the late Phil Frickey, Professor of Public Law at Bolt School of Law at the University of California Berkeley. My interests in Indian law drew from a research agenda involving the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and its affects on indigenous relationships to land and water in Alaska. I took both Federal Indian Law I and II, as well as a semester of independent study, from him as he wrote the seminal work American Indian Law, Cases, and Commentary with his colleagues, legal scholars Anderson, Berger, and Krakoff. I found him generously patient with my general fumbling and innocent gaffs, letting me find my way through the nonlinear world of Native American law. Aside from legal study, one of the lessons he taught me was to try steering away from normative statements in my work.
One day after class he invited me up to his office to talk about a term paper. His office was a few floors up, in a converted dorm room, with a fantastic view of San Francisco bay. I sat down and he handed me the giant book Alaska Natives and the Land. I believe another student, a child of an Alaska state politician, gave the volume to Frickey and he in turn loaned it to me, indefinitely so it seems.
Cover of Alaska Natives and the Land
The humongous volume Alaska Natives and the Land composes a 565 page study of Alaska, its people, and natural resources by the Federal Field Committee on Development and Planning published 10 years after Alaska statehood in October 1968. When open on my desk the work spreads out well over two and a half feet.
After the discovery of oil deposits in Prudoe Bay March 1968, the book served to educate congressional lawmakers about the region's indigenous people as Native leaders and activists labored with state and federal officials to come to terms with settling the issue of Native title. The book includes a marvelous 3 foot by 2 and a half foot foldable map detailing the Native communities within the state. The chart breaks down the regional areas with Native populations by size and by specifying whether the sites are predominately Native in nature (colored blue) or if they are non-indigenous sites with Native populations (red on the map).
Detail of Native community map
The book begins with an overview of Alaska Natives, moves to aspects of village life, to a chapter called Land and Ethnic Relations.
The chapter Land and Ethnic Relations discusses a regional analysis of Native identifications to indigenous territories. Since the book was a way to educate governmental leaders on Native land claims the chapter begins with a set of "pertinent" questions about Native land rights activism, like the query "Was, and is, there a definable dimension of Native ethnic territoriality?" Another intriguing question the chapter puts forth is " Did aboriginal "property rights" exist?" The narrative then argues that its findings, based from the assortment of questions, is that
"In their use of biological community for livelihood the Native people "occupied" the land in the sense of being on and over virtually all of it in the pursuit of their subsistence, but they did not "occupy" the land in any agrarian or legal sense as understood by Anglo-American Jurisprudence."
Thus four years previous to the passage of the settlement there was an ideological argument against "Native title" even though indigenous actors themselves had been taking to the courts in regard to this matter for decades. In the exploration of the Kodiak region, the book extrapolates on the ways of Alutiiq people based on the Hubert Bancroft's History of Alaska(1886) and Ales Hrdlicka's Anthropology of Kodiak Island (1944), in the thesis that Kodiak Islanders, before the arrival of the Russians, held no reasonable form of government and simply foraged off the land and sea, "consuming anything that can be digested." These two misleading observations perhaps helped lawmakers conclude in the non-recognition of Native title during the time of settlement.
This small read of the 565 page work lends little justice to the scope and importance Alaska Natives and the Land played in the passage of the land claims settlement and I would encourage anyone pursuing a course of research in Alaska Native geography, law, history, and culture to track down a copy. Also, Alaska Natives and the Land proves a great example of the many books written about areas of the world the US acquired through its various means. I have seen such volumes written on other national colonies such Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.
There are a few copies of Alaska Natives and the Land available on Amazon.
On Tuesday November 11th at Colorado State University I will be giving a talk as part of the Native American and Indigenous Studies colloquium for Native Heritage Month. The next day on the 12th Ketchikan's own Emily Moore will also be speaking on "Art in the Time of NAGPRA: Innovative Possibilities for Native American Art in Museums." Other speakers also promise exciting talks. Check out the post below.
My talk Slow Violence Across the Land and Sea centers Native history as a way for connecting United States and Russian activities in Alaska. Each nation's industrial extractive pursuits in the region have led to a extended timeline of devastation, from the 18th century extinction of Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in 1989. Moreover, Indigenous compulsory participation in this centuries long violence as impressed flexible labor makes visible an Indigenous geography, a first space, that is fundamental for understanding how Russian and United States endeavors compose one long history in the Great Land.
Will Rogers standing on airplane wing while Wiley Post signs autographs in Fairbanks, 1935.
Humorist Will Rogers once noted about life, "We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can." In 1935 the public knew Cherokee writer and performer Will Rogers as one of the most famous, smart, and jovial celebrities in the world. Born in 1879 of a distinguished Native family in Cherokee Nation, Rogers went on to pen over 4,000 newspaper articles and star in more than 70 films. Coming to international fame through performing as a cowboy in the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway in New York, he went on to be one of the nation's trusted analyst on American political life.
Rogers, with lariat, in his 20s as a Vaudeville performer.
As a young man Rogers held a thirst for travel. Leaving Cherokee Nation, and Oklahoma, in his early 20s he worked as a ranch hand in South America and Africa. Later returning to the United States he enhanced those cowboy skills and learned to become a trick rope performer, working at circuses and traveling shows. By 1916 he had transformed his career from basic physical entertainment into one that involved much political satire. Within 2 years of changing his act he was heavily involved in films, starring in a host of silent and talking movies.
WIll Rogers JWS12778
With adages such as, "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else," or "An onion can make people cry, but there has never been a vegetable invented to make them laugh,"his wise comments could prove to be light-hearted and in good spirit. Rogers however could also delve into more politically directed expressions like, "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for," and "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock." Though in his newspaper columns he did assert some racially controversial language once or twice, Rogers proved to be a thoughtful and well-meaning voice for an adoring public. At the time, he was one of but a handful of people in the world whose life was developing into what we know today as that of an internationally known celebrity. One could think of him as somewhere between Mark Twain in the nineteenth century and Stephen Colbert in the twenty-first.
Will Rogers in Fairbanks, 1935. ASL-P67-137
His love of travel continued as his fame rose to new heights. Through the 1920s and 30s he spent years circulating through the United States, Asia, and South America, hosting dinners and lecturing on political issues. Upon what he learned from these experiences he once joked, "A humorist entertains, a lecturer annoys."He was also a committed social activist and worked for countless fundraisers for humanitarian causes, like Bob Hope. In 1935 he and his dear friend pilot Wiley Post set upon a tour from the United States west coast up through Siberia, scouting out a possible international mail route. Rogers used the trip for material for his newspaper articles.
"Wiley Post poses for a photograph just before taking off to resume his solo flight round the world. The Winnie Mae has just been repaired after hitting a rough patch of tailings at the airstrip in Flat, Alaska and crashing." (circa1933.) UAF-1998-129-3
Roger's friend, the celebrated pilot Wiley Post was the first person to fly solo around the world. Texas born in 1898, he fell in love with planes by the age of 15 after seeing one fly through the air around his hometown. Intending to become an military pilot, World War I ended before he could finish training, and from there he returned to Texas where he worked in the oil fields. In the conclusion of a brief term under incarceration he also went to work in a flying circus. Losing his right eye amidst an accident when in the oil fields, an insurance settlement allowed him to purchase a plane. He joined traveling air shows and this work is believed to be the way Post and Rogers came to be close friends. As time went on, Post avidly sought to advance the field of aviation as a whole. Post always flew higher and further into the sky. In fact, he is credited for locating the high altitude air currents known as jet streams that are now used by planes in everyday travel as highways. During his high altitude experiments, technicians invented many prototype pressure suits. A quick google search of his name will reveal some interesting inventions he wore as he tested how high he could thrust into the sky.
"Will Rogers, Wiley Post, and two other men." "Four men stand on a dock; man wearing a hat is Will Rogers; man with eye patch is Wiley Post." ASL-P384-1263 In Fairbanks.
On August 15 1935, shortly after leaving north from Fairbanks, Rogers and Post lost their lives when their plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska. The tragic event marked a horrid loss for their families and for general public who looked towards these two in admiration. For both had lead extraordinary lives in taking part in the construction of the the globally-connected world we now take for granted on a day-to-day basis.
Rogers and Post in Fairbanks August 1935.
Wiley Post's work in advancing aviation as an effective means of travel contributed to how airplanes would become an important thread tying together the modern world system. In the 20th century Alaska pilots were greatly esteemed among Native people since most villages and towns required air service for the transportation of goods and people. In fact, I can recall an elder once proudly announcing that his grandson, who was 13 at the time, would someday be a pilot. One could make the case that air travel has played an important role in the making of Alaska as one region and as a naturalized part of the nation. That is, those of us from Alaska know the great distances we have to travel between the town, village, or city were are from and the contiguous part of the United States. When I was growing up Fairbanks and Juneau seemed just as distant from Kodiak as Seattle or Tokyo. In this way, airplanes have very much allowed towns and cities like Kodiak, Fairbanks, and Juneau, each sitting in a distinct geography, to form what would be known as one region, Alaska. Then of course air travel has served as a way for people from the contiguous part of the nation to grow familiar with the state. I do have an Alaska Native colleague who does research into aviation's role in Alaska and I find the field of inquiry very exciting.
Will Rogers (in Alaska), exiting a Lockheed Orion on floats. ASL-P289-041
Will Rogers' level of fame surely set a precedent for those who came after him. He belonged to a trailblazing cohort of performers who started their acts on vaudeville stages only to get involved with the new industries of radio, TV, and film that would transformed their entire profession. Roger's was also a Cherokee Indian writer and performer, one of many who would rise to the level of celebrity in American life. His influence can surely be seen in the work of Cherokee performers like Keely Smith and James Garner. Below is a photograph of a monument erected in honor of Rogers and Post in Point Barrow, Alaska. The airport there is named in honor of the two them.
"View of memorial stone to Will Rogers and Wiley Post who died during an airplane crash at Barrow, Alaska. Inscriptions on memorial reads: "Will Rogers and Wiley Post, 'Americas ambassadors of good will,' ended life's flight here August 15, 1935. This stone was taken from the same quarry as that used in buildingOklahoma's memorial to Will Rogers at Claremore Oklahoma U.S.A." and "In memorial of Brother Will Rogers. Top of the World Masonic Club K.C.B.D. 1058. -1945." AMRC-b85-27-953
On March May 31, 1977 the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was completed, allowing for crude to travel from the Alaskan North Slope to the shores of Southern Alaska. As I mentioned in a pervious post, almost 10 percent of all employees were Alaska Natives.
This is a NASA enhanced satellite map of the world that centers the North Pole. If one looks toward the top of the map they can see the regions of Alaska and Siberia. Towards the map's bottom are the tips of the European Nordic countries. Following the last post that briefly described the origins of the reindeer economy with Native Alaska this post illuminates the unique shared history between Native Alaska and the Saami, Sami or Sámi, an Indigenous people from northern Europe. They have also been called "Laplanders," which refers to the Native cultural geography they inhabit transnationally through Europe.
Three Sámi (Lapp) women, one smoking a pipe, wearing their traditional caps
The picture below contains a Saami family in 1896 near Nordland, in Europe. The grownups to the left "are Ingrid (born Sarri) and her husband Nils Andersen Inga. In front of the parents are Berit and Ole Nilsen. The lady on the right is Ellen, sister of Ingrid. In front of Ellen are the children Inger Anna and Tomas. The children of Inger Anna are reindeer herders still today."
Detroit Publishing Co. Print no. 7123
The photograph below depicts the first Saami family in Alaska taken three years later in 1889.
"First Lap[p] family from Tromso, Norway, [in] Teller, Alaska, 1898." "Lapp family on steps of cabin, Teller, Alaska." Photographer: Miles Brothers. AMRC. Eide Collection Identifier AMRC-b70-28-13
In 1894, Sheldon Jackson began employing and importing Saami with aspirations they would help Alaska Natives take to the livelihood. Alaska Natives referred to them as the "Card people" because Saami hats and shoes resembled, to the Natives, the depictions on the face of playing cards. Government functionaries grew critical of the reindeer operation when by the early twentieth century Saami herdsmen owned the majority of Alaska reindeer. An Indigenous people, the Saami faced European colonization and the establishment of national borders through out their traditional lands.
"Sami family." "Group photograph of a Sami (Lapp) woman, two boys, and a baby in front of a wooden structure in Nome, Alaska." "Nome - Alaska." ca. 1901-1902." Grace Carr Raymenton photographs, Archives and Special Collections, Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage.Grace Carr Raymenton photographs, circa 1899-1902. UAA-HMC-1059 Identifier UAA-hmc-1059-20
Since Saami culture revolves around reindeer it makes perfect sense that these people would take a leading role in the management of this economy, though Americans had poised this as an operation for Alaska Native vocational training. Alaska Natives and Saami then worked side by side, making connections still with Native Alaska today.
"Laplanders milking reindeer at Port Clarence, Alaska, 1900." "Shows a man and a woman in traditional dress."Photographer Hegg, Eric A. Date1900. Eric A. Hegg Photographs Order Number HEG544. U of Washington Special Collections.
The migration of Saami workers into Alaska may have been influenced by political developments in northern Europe at the time. Norway in 1905 declared independence from Sweden as a nation-state. Borders between the two countries tightened and thus restricting transnational Saami movements. Traveling their cultural geography when herding also faced impairments with areas controlled by Russia.
"The genuine Lapps, Nome, Alaska." "A Lapp, or Sami, couple stand outside their cabin, while a child looks out the door, Nome, Alaska." Photographer: O. D. Goetze. (Otto Daniel)
AMRC. O.D. Goetze Collection, Identifier AMRC-b01-41-72
With the United States government concerned that the Saami owned and operated the majority of reindeer herds in the Alaska region they made a policy change. The government discontinued hiring Saami workers because the reindeer program's intent was to train Alaska Natives for the occupation. That is not to say the Saami left Alaska, or that they discontinued immigrating into the region or other parts of the nation. Because they faced oppression from European nations, when the arrived in the United States many chose to identify as Finnish, Norwegian or Dutch, as to escape persecution.
People are often surprised when they meet Alaska Natives with Nordic last names, but if ones spend anytime in the region, or knows people from Native Alaska, then they would be too aware of the splendid array of surnames we have that are derived from Saami geographic areas. Some of these last names may have been assumed when Saami made their homes in Alaska Native villages, marrying into Indigenous families. Though my archival work in this area proves limited, I will admit that I find the lack of photographs containing Saami with Alaska Natives unusual yet unsurprising since both were subject peoples.
According to Dean Olson in the report "Alaska Reindeer Herdsmen: A Study of Native Management in Transition," that he authored in 1969, the idea for implanting reindeer into the Alaskan ecology came to Dr. Sheldon Jackson while he and Capt. M.A. Healy set out on a cruise through the Arctic in 1890. Seeing Siberian Native economies built around reindeer the two began hatching a plan to import the animal across the Strait. Hoping to employ Natives as reindeer herders Jackson asked the federal government for the 2000 dollars.
"Sheldon Jackson, D.D., LL.D., Vice President Alaska Geographic Society, May 15, 1899."
Identifier ASL Jackson-Sheldon 1
Capt. M.A. Healy, U.S.R.M., Commanding U.S. Revenue Cutter "Bear."
Collection. ASL. Identifier ASL-Healy-MA-1 ASL-P01-3278
The government was unwilling to provide the funds so Jackson collected donations with which he shipped 16 deer from Siberia to the Aleutians. At that point, the reindeer industry began without haste. Jackson appealed to the federal government for funding and by 1892 four Indigenous Siberians came with a shipment of 171 of reindeer to Port Clarence Alaska, where a reindeer station was built as well as herding instructional facilities. Olson reports Native resistance to the development in Wales, Alaska. Sounds like the reindeer station became a site of immense tension, resulting with the death of one worker. Two years after their arrival the Siberian Natives returned home. By the end of the century hundreds of reindeer lived in Alaska. Transportation routes for herds stretched throughout the Alaska mainland. According to Carrie Bucki Manager of Reindeer Research Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks, many people preferred hitching reindeer to sleds over dogs because reindeer ate grass and therefore less expensive to keep as work-animals.
"A reindeer harnessed up for pulling a sled.
Reindeer called Qimukti in Iñupiaq were commonly used for pulling sleds."
Point Barrow, Alaska, 1899-1908. ASL-PCA-320 IdentifierASL-P320-28
Alaska Native herders worked throughout the mainland into the 20th century. Here are some photographs I found of Native folks herding. Take note the first image taken in Golovin, Alaska looks to be taken during one of the less snowy seasons. The image beneath that one Theresa Creek, Alaska appears to have captured the wintertime corralling of reindeer. The next post will explore some of the social implications the reindeer industry brought Native life.
"Herders driving reindeer to corral. Golovin, Alaska." "View of reindeer herders driving reindeer to Lomen Reindeer Corporation reindeer processing plant corral at Golovin,Alaska. July 1938." Photographer: Ray B. Dame. Original photograph size: 8 1/8" x 10". Identifier AMRC-b75-175-211
"Theresa Creek Reindeer Corral, 3/1942." "Deer passing from outer to inner holding pocket. Photographer's number 803. CreatorDale, George Allan, 1900- Contributors Butler, Evelyn I. Evelyn Butler and George Dale. Photographs, 1934-1982. ASL-PCA-306 IdentifierASL-P306-0717
"Reindeer herding in Southwest, Alaska 1930's" Collection NameEugene L. Snow Collection Alaska Film Archives, University of Alaska, Fairbanks IdentifierAAF-51
Resource for those with more interest in the history can find a wonderful primer written by Carrie Bucki Manager of Reindeer Research Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks here: http://www.uaf.edu/files/snras/MP_04_07.pdf
Alutiiq Artist Tanya Lukin Linklater originates from the Native Villages of Port Lions and Afognak in the Kodiak archipelago. Based in northern Ontario, her practice spans experimental choreography, performance, installation, text, and video. She has performed and exhibited at Images Festival/Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto), VI Mostra Internacional de Videodanca Sao Carlos (Brasil), Museum of Contemporary Native Art (Santa Fe), Culver Center of the Arts (California), Expanse Movement Arts Festival (Edmonton), Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery (Anchorage), Near North Mobile Media Lab + White Water Gallery (Ontario), TRIBE (Saskatoon), Sakewewak (Regina), and elsewhere. She studied at University of Alberta (M.Ed. 2003) and Stanford University (A.B. Honours 1998), where she received the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship & Louis Sudler Prize in Creative and Performing Arts. Tanya was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant in 2010. She was nominated for the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Dance in 2011 and received the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature in 2013. She has collaborated with Duane Linklater on two projects: grain(s) in 2013 and Up River (2012). Her work has been generously supported by Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. You can view more about her amazing work at her website: http://tanyalukinlinklater.com/
Q: How does being an Alaska Native contribute to the production of your artwork?
I originate from two small Native villages in the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska: Native Village of Afognak and Native Village of Port Lions. I currently reside in northern Ontario, Canada, with my family.
Initially, my performances (2005 - 2011) were generally more concerned with intimacy than spectacle in terms of subject matter (the experiences of women’s work, domestic spaces, and memory), and often centered on my research and investigation of traditional forms of Alaska Native song, dance, and language through a contemporary practice that posed questions surrounding the complexities of cultural revitalization. For example, I’ve directed contemporary dancers in movement investigations that deconstructed the principles of traditional dances in order to construct new dances. I’ve also performed works that engage with Alutiiq language and song and become an embodied investigation of the language, deconstructed, from my perspective as a non-speaker.
In recent years, my practice, rooted in performance and the body, has expanded to include video, photography, and installation. I am integrating my writing practice into these works, exhibiting text pieces alongside video installations and in other forms. I consider my practice experimental, process-oriented, and research driven. The questions leading my practice currently centre on images of the "Eskimo,” women’s stories, how (personal) memory is embodied and activated in the present moment, and all of these in relation to being-ness.
I keep returning to the relationship between indigenous peoples and museums and/or anthropology. Alutiiq artists from Kodiak Island have engaged with museums and anthropological collections for many years. The late Helen Simeonoff, my relative from Afognak, initiated Alutiiq engagement with specific collections and others like Doug Inga have traveled to museums to view Alutiiq masks, bentwood hats, baskets and other “artifacts” held in collections in France, Russia, and elsewhere. They describe the experience as transformative; while they hold these artifacts in their gloved hands (under the direction of museum staff) they experience strong emotional responses, often brought to tears.
Maggie Roberts Portrait by Helen Simeonoff
from Kodiak Alutiiq Dancers FB page
In this context, I consider my father, Ivan Lukin, who carves masks, bentwood visors, kayaks and other objects, by referencing anthropological texts. Otherwise he is self-taught. He described to me once the emotional response he had to different visual images, and that he knew which objects to carve based on his intuitive assessment of the image’s meaning (as we no longer know the meanings of the objects).
I deeply respect the art practices of those I mention above, as well as Coral Chernoff, Susie Malutin, Lena Amason-Berns, and others, as they are connected to our home and are engaged with cultural work. The work is often labor intensive (tanning fish skin, harvesting grasses, harvesting animals and tanning hides for furs, using sinew and other traditional materials rather than contemporary materials) and I feel strongly that the process is just as significant as the resulting object. This process hopefully (among other aims) embeds an Alutiiq worldview into the object.
Yet, I’m also compelled by artists that address and perhaps interrogate the relationship between tribes and museums and/or anthropology. James Luna’s Artifact Piece, 1985-87, is of course a very significant work in this regard. There is more work to be done in this area.
Q: Who most influences you as an artist?
I will, without hesitation say my husband, Duane Linklater. He is Omaskeko Cree from Moose Cree First Nation. We have the opportunity to dialogue about art, text, films, museum culture, indigenous languages, theory, indigenous and art and film histories on a daily basis. I see his process for each project; I understand his influences; we have collaborated on two projects (Up River, 2012 at a small indigenous collective in Saskatchewan and grain(s), 2013 for Images Festival + Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art); he’s been my camera operator on two projects (In Memoriam, 2012 and Untitled, 2013). Our collaborations are not always successful - we are still developing a process for working together. He understands and pushes my work like no one else.
Duane Linklater. For more information on his work please visit his artist page here.
Do you think that Indigenous art be produced in a formalist way without referencing Native history and culture?
I think that part of our role as indigenous artists may be to engage with indigenous concepts and conceptual frameworks. We are, also, often engaging with multiple frameworks and with European and American art histories. What sets us apart is our respective (tribal) conceptual frameworks, which may necessitate a reflection on our respective histories. Elizabeth Cook Lynn put forth the idea that all indigenous literatures should be, in some way, strengthening tribal sovereignty. I think that her assertion is specific and could be broadened to include the strengthening of indigenous languages, worldview, histories, etc. through our respective practices (in a non-prescriptive way).
Tanya Lukin-Linklater: 2013 Literature Award Winner
When I consider my practice and other artists I look to, I’m often compelled by work that references histories. I’ve engaged with specific histories of my people from a contemporary perspective. I’ve also engaged with film histories, re-enacting scenes from films (The 400 Blows, Mouchette, Ivan’s Childhood, Nanook of the North, Woman in the Dunes) in live performance and in video works. I’m also interested in meaning making, so I feel that when we engage with history, we also make meaning of the history in our current context.
Duane Linklater often begins his artist talks with a projected image of a treaty medal. Treaty-making can trace its origins to the Royal Proclamation of 1763 by King George III, a document (some argue) that establishes indigenous rights to the land (including hunting rights) in North America. The Royal Proclamation established the British Crown as the sole entity to engage in land purchases in North America, and established the foundation for treaty-making with indigenous peoples in Canada. October 7, 2013 is the 250th anniversary of the Royal Proclamation. I find this significant and will mark the day by attending local events commemorating the day where I live in northern Ontario.
The text, Treaty Elders of Saskatchewan, outlines foundational spiritual beliefs within treaty-making processes through a series of interviews with elders from the four First Nation groups of Saskatchewan. It frames treaty-making as a covenant between respective First Nations, the Crown, and the Creator by examining the symbols and objects involved. This is significant because it examines a culturally specific perspective of treaty-making. I get uncomfortable with descriptions that place First Nations in Canada in positions of victimhood, citing starvation and illiteracy as the reasons that treaties were “signed” with X’s. These assumptions about treaties, while in some instances may be historically accurate, also have the possibility to undermine indigenous agency in this process.
Last winter the Idle No More Movement swept Canada (and parts of the U.S.) through teach-ins and creative forms of civil disobedience against environmental legislation that was enacted. The protests included round dances in shopping malls at Christmastime, and I remember many signs that asserted “we are all treaty people” emphasizing the significance of treaties in Canada, still today. Another favorite sign of mine was “Moose hide tanners against fascism” in Northwest Territories.
I personally like the specificity of artists engaged with their particular tribe’s histories or cultural objects and connecting those histories to the present moment. However, you can see from my own work that I also am influenced by Canada and its histories as I choose to make my home here, and I have relatives here.
Are there any current affairs or political developments that are currently influencing your art?
In late 2012 I began writing a text, “Not like us” in response to the attempted assassination of girls’ education activist, Malala Yousafzai, in the region of Swat Valley, Pakistan. I was moved to write because of her commitment to education. I considered my girlhood struggles with the complexities of race, gender and poverty in America in the 80’s. As a child, I believed in education as an equalizer, even as I witnessed deep inequities around me. “Not Like Us” and “A girl” are poems that reference the breaking international story surrounding Malala’s attempted assassination. These works are unpublished, and I am currently developing their future forms as visual works installed in galleries.
Brief Malala Yousafzai story
Last winter I followed Chief Theresa Spence’s hunger strike, a 44-day action that began December 11, 2012. Originating from Attawapiskat First Nation in James Bay, Ontario, Chief Spence’s hunger strike took place not far from Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Victoria Island in the Ottawa River. The hunger strike was intended to bring attention to the treaty relationship in Canada amidst federal legislation that further eroded environmental laws in favor of expanding resource extraction, without adequate consultation with First Nations. Her action was a part of a larger indigenous rights movement in Canada and her continued leadership as Chief of her First Nation.
Interview with Chief Teresa Spence
I came to see the mitts she wore in many of her press engagements as an important symbol for the people of James Bay. I began a series of interviews with my husband’s relatives, Agnes Hunter, Marlene Kapashesit, and Lillian Mishi Trapper, during January and February 2013 regarding the process for making traditional James Bay Mitts. I interviewed these extended relatives to ask them about their experiences tanning hides (caribou, moose, deer), sewing mitts and other garments, and beading.
“The harvest studies” is a long poem that came to include direct transcriptions of the interviews and in it, I create visual designs similar to beadwork. I am now preparing for a visual arts residency in northern Ontario and will engage with this text for the residency, likely to be installed in public places.
Performance by Tanya Lukin from WKP Kennedy at the Fair of Alternative Art of Sudbury 2010
I’ve been interested in Native women making “crafts,” beading intricate designs passed on from their relatives, sewing smoked moose hide into moccasins, and fur into mukluks, mits, toques, since I was very young. This functional art is practiced in the intimacy of one’s home, but also becomes a process of crafting for the public in a kind of performance of women’s work, of cultural work. Yet “craft” is de-valued in the hierarchy of art.
In 2010 I beaded an Alutiiq headdress while seated within a small installation in a train car during galerie du nouvel – ontario’s foire d’art alternatif de sudbury. My intent was to engage with the image of the Native woman as craftsperson within a hierarchy of art. Passersby stopped and conversed.
In 2014 I will perform for NM/Santiago (New Maternalisms III) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santiago at the invitation of curator, Natalie Loveless. I will sort thousands of beads in various colors on moose hide into specific designs.
The transitory nature of the art object (beads that are not sewn or fixed) relates to the transitory nature of performance. Indeed, the performance problematizes craft and art as commodity (and anthropological relic) because performative actions will become the art object. The performative identities of “craftperson,” “artist,” and “mother” will also be named through action.
Trade beads conjure a past of ill-gotten land gains in the Americas, international trade routes, and Indigenous women’s appropriation of trade beads in indigenous designs. The performance reminds us of a historical global economy through the intimacy of women’s work.
Culver Center of the Arts | Indigenous Choreographers Residency Featuring the work and participation of choregraphers Jack Gray, Rulan Tangen, and Tanya Lukin Linklater. Jacqueline Shea Murphy, coordinator. UCR campus and to Culver April 9-22, 2012.
Thank you Tanya for allowing me to interview you and feature your work here.
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